K37

First developed and flown near the end of the 22nd century, the venerable K37-TNTRL has become the de-facto workhorse of The Ring. Its simple and robust design has proven over the decades to have the kind of reliability and maintainability that's vital to the thousands of captains and crew who call these well-loved vessels home. -In-Game Description

K37 TNTRL

Top-down view of the K37
Make	Rusatom-Antonoff
High-Stress	1
Low-Stress	2
Crew	4
Dry mass	33,200 kg
Cargo bay	96 m^3
Processed cargo	7,000 kg
New price	365,999 E$
Hull Length	34.2 m
Hull Width	16 m
Min. Cargo Bay Width	2.4 m

The K37 is the workhorse of the rings, cheap and reliable, and is capable of fulfilling nearly any role. They are so prevalent that nearly every ringer will have worked or ridden in one at some point. The simple and modular layout has led to the creation of many custom variations on the classic design, specialized in various roles.

Notes

• The Rusatom-Antonoff K37 TNTRL is the starter ship. It's a reliable, flexible ship.
• The K37 is the most common ship in the rings, most NPCs will be flying one.
• The stock loadout has insufficient thermal output for continuous thrust.
• Lore-wise, the ship has pyrotechnically detachable reactor, however, it is almost certain to be broken or removed on a used K37.

Variants

Name	High-Stress	Low-Stress	Crew	Dry mass	Cargo bay	Processed cargo	Stripped hull price	Variant
K37 TNTRL	1	2	4	33,200 kg	96 m^3	7,000 kg	88,949 E$
KTA24 TNTRL	1	2	4	27,970 kg	58 m^3	3,000 kg	87,853 E$	Tug with angled reverse thrust
KX37 TNTRL	1	2	4	37,970 kg	110 m^3	10,000 kg	140,249 E$	Extended cargo hold
Runasimi KR37 TNTRL	1	2	6	47,500 kg	100 m^3	4,000 kg	207,299 E$	EMP shielded
K44 MHFTR Prototype	0	4	4	54,600 kg	136 m^3	14,000 kg	523,200 E$	Abandoned prototype

Codex Entry

First developed and flown near the end of the 22nd century, the venerable Rusatom-Antonoff K37 TNTRL has become the de-facto workhorse of The Ring. Its simple and robust design has proven over the decades to have the kind of reliability and maintainability that's vital to the thousands of captains and crew who call these well-loved vessels home.

The K37-TNTRL, sometimes affectionately known as the "Tarantula" and often abbreviated to just "K37", was initially designed as a short-haul mining ship, although their modular design has proven extremely adaptable in the decades since the model's introduction. Despite their technological obsolescence, today a K37 can be effectively refitted to suit interplanetary travel, light combat duty, mining, cargo hauling, and even light duty mobile mineral refining. The sturdy reconfigurable hardpoints aren't quite suitable for mounting high power military grade kinetic weapons, but they otherwise handle almost any equipment you might imagine fitting to a craft of this size, including mass drivers, microwave emitters, mining lasers, and much more besides.

The K37 is compact but sturdy, measuring just over 32 meters long and weighing 37 tonnes when dry. The design is highly modular, but all configurations share a few key elements. The fuselage, crew module, nuclear reactor, cooling system and main drive are effectively standard across all models, offering a baseline specification that specialist builders can develop on.

At the heart of every K37 is a purpose-built nuclear reactor, with thermal power provided by an assortment ((number unknown)) of Rusatom's SO6 "Sunshard" fuel rods. Thermal energy from the reactor is used to heat liquid water for use as both engine propellant and working fluid for the onboard 100MW turboelectric generator. Due to the extremely high temperature and pressure achieved inside the reactor core the propellant exists in a supercritical state, yielding relatively high propulsion performance despite the simple design.

The high operating temperature of the Sunshards enable relatively compact cooling solutions to be used, and the reactor's entire waste heat output can be dissipated through a series of graphene radiators on the outer walls of the reactor module. Although this isn't recommended due to the large thermal stresses applied to the radiators, a reactor running hot at over 4000K can dissipate 4GW through this array. Waste heat from other ship systems is negligible compared to that of the reactor, so the rest of the ship is cooled by a heavy 'skirt' of heat-pumped radiators which serve both as a cooling surface and a protective layer for the more delicate reactor cooling behind it.

The main drive of the K37 is a relatively simple bimodal nuclear thermal-electric rocket, using a large Lorentz-effect electric boost stage powered by a magnetoplasmadynamic generator, as well as optionally using direct thermal power from the reactor. For long-distance cruising the drive can operate in a so-called "high gear", where thrust is provided mainly by the Lorentz accelerator, powered by the onboard closed-cycle turbine to minimise propellant waste and maximise exhaust velocity. For operations inside the rings however, the main drive will shift into a low gear where the propellant mass flow is increased significantly to buy extra thrust, at the cost of exhaust velocity. While in high-thrust mode, the K37's combination of nuclear-thermal thrust and electromnagnetic exhaust velocity can push several gee of acceleration when lightly loaded, and even carrying its own mass in cargo and fuel a K37 can exceed 1g at full burn. While propellant usage at these thrust levels is prodigious, the drive is still far more economical than simple chemical thrusters - even a modest 30T of propellant is more than enough for a good miner to fill their cargo hold with ores and get back to station with propellant to spare!

A K37 commonly carries a crew of three, though in emergencies it can be operated by a single busy pilot. The crew facilities of most K37s reflect this, being relatively short on amenities and little space in the standard model, though "caravan" refits which convert the cargo hold into a larger living space aren't unheard of!

Links

Rosatom-Antonov K37 TNTRL Operation Manual: The cold boot sequence